The two favourites to win the Conservative party leadership: Theresa May and Michael Gove.
Composite: Various Agency

Immigration

Theresa May

The home secretary said that the benefits of mass migration were “close to zero”. She said immigration could not be reduced and that current levels had an unsustainable impact on housing, schools and hospitals. She recast David Cameron’s target of reducing net migration to below 100,000 to the status of an “ambition” in the face of the near-record latest figure of 333,000. Initially, the government was on track to hit the target by reducing net migration from 250,000 to 180,000, but Britain’s relative prosperity as the “jobs factory of Europe” put paid to that.

Her tough stance on immigration was sealed by the conflicts over the Home Office-run “Go Home” posters on vans, her hard line on taking Syrian refugees who had made the journey to Europe, and the “chilling and bitter” message of her last Tory party conference speech when she claimed mass migration was threatening Britain’s cohesion.

Michael Gove

Gove played the immigration card the hardest of the official leave campaign leaders, warning that Turkey joining the EU would mean “a direct and serious threat” to public services in the UK, but he said Nigel Farage’s notorious “Breaking Point” poster “made me shudder”. Gove is widely seen as the brains behind leave; Farage has said that it was the moment that Gove publicly advocated Ukip’s policy of an Australian-style points-based immigration that the campaign gained momentum. He has consistently stressed Britain’s links with countries outside Europe. Campaigning for leave, he spoke of Britain “taking its place alongside countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and America as a self-governing democracy”. Despite being education secretary for four years from 2010 he did little to respond to the pressures on schools in areas of most rapid population change.

Policing

May

She oversaw the most fundamental reforms of policing for 50 years. The official crime rate has continued to fall on her watch as the longest-serving home secretary for 100 years. She has not been afraid to confront the police over stop and search, or such historic injustices as Hillsborough; she introduced elected police and crime commissioners, curbed the power of the Police Federation and pushed through 20% cuts to Whitehall police grants.

May has set as high priorities the issues of violence against women, including failures to investigate rape, and modern slavery. She set up the Goddard inquiry into institutional child sex abuse and the successful inquiry into undercover policing. The scandal around the Stephen Lawrence inquiry was also tackled. She has shown she is prepared to stand up to even the most entrenched vested interest.

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Gove

As justice secretary he has unveiled a radical programme of prison reform to tackle the intractable crisis in the jails. It won many plaudits from liberal penal reformers but has yet to deliver any significant change amid rising violence in prisons. He has refused to take immediate action to cut inmate numbers. Nevertheless he has overturned a number of the more hardline decisions of his predecessor Chris Grayling, such as the ban on books being sent to prisoners and cancelling the UK prison contract with the Saudis in the face of Foreign Office opposition.

Security and civil liberties

May

Responding to the disclosure by Edward Snowden of GCHQ’s mass digital surveillance programmes, she said the whistleblower had damaged national security. She introduced the investigatory powers bill to extend snooping powers to web browsing records and strengthened oversight of security agencies. She scrapped Labour’s plans for ID cards but presided over massive expansion of the database state.

Gove

A hardline hawk on counter-extremism whose 2006 polemical book, Celsius 7/7, warned of a “widespread reluctance to acknowledge the real scale and nature of the Islamist terror threat” in Britain and “the failure to scrutinise, monitor or check the actions, funding and operation of those committed to spreading the Islamist word in Britain”. He blamed alleged extremism in Birmingham schools in the so-called “Trojan Horse” plot on a failure by May’s Home Office to “drain the swamp” by confronting extremists. The battle between May and Gove has continued to this day to the point of delaying the government’s new counter-extremism laws. Gove opposed the introduction of ID cards and is a strong supporter of gay marriage.

Human rights

May

The strongest supporter in the cabinet of withdrawal from the European convention on human rights, and the jurisdiction of its Strasbourg base. She has blamed the Strasbourg judges for frustrating her attempts to increase deportations from Britain.

Part of her opposition stems from her humiliating decade-long battle to deport the radical preacher Abu Qatada; when she finally succeeded in sending him back to Jordan she practically put him on the plane herself. But in the process she did secure guarantees that torture-tainted evidence would not be used against him.

His planned “British bill of rights” is aimed at curbing the power of both the European court of human rights and the European court of justice, especially through the impact of the EU’s charter of fundamental rights. But Gove takes a more liberal approach than May arguing against withdrawal from the European convention on human rights. The proposed British bill of rights has so far not significantly differed from the Human Rights Act it is designed to protect.

Negotiating in Europe

May

After 10 years she is now the most experienced interior minister in Europe and has proved highly influential in justice and home affairs policies. She has recently secured agreement for a new Europe-wide database logging passenger information for all flights in and out of Europe. Although a professed Eurosceptic it was little surprise when she announced she was backing the remain in Europe campaign. In an earlier life she was a Brussels lobbyist for the Association for Payment Clearing Services for six years and is very much at home trying to secure what she wants in Europe.

Gove

He made the leave commitment to quitting Europe’s single market despite the warning of most economists that it would be the most disruptive option for the UK. He would therefore start the negotiations from a “Brexit max” position. He will have taken part in some council of ministers meetings as justice secretary but his previous jobs of education secretary and chief whip have not made him a player on the European stage.